Posts tagged “hotspur”  

Attached the GoPro Video Cam to the Hotspur and went out for a ride. Huggacast to follow.

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Custom Bicycles A Passionate Pursuit is a coffee-table book that spans the globe with images of custom bicycles. Page 82 features the Bike Hugger Hotspur that was handbuilt by Bill Davidson. The Calfee bullhorn bike is in the book and more from all the builders you know and those maybe you don't.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Read more about the Hotspur and the thinking behind the design in this post from Mark V. Also see the Hotspur tag.

Rode DA 7900 this weekend and the group is a lot like upgrading an operating system: the same thing (it’s very much DA), but faster, snappier, and more responsive, with new gadgets to geek out on.

This is a quick upgrade review, while Mark works on a DA podcast with all the details. I rode the Hotspur with the new DA on a cold Winter day in downtown Seattle up into Magnolia hill, back on the Burke-Gilman Trail, and to West Seattle.

That’s an 84 Signature and a 2008 Hotspur.

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The Ammon Ace, the biggest ship I’ve ever seen, passed under the West Seattle Freeway and the Swing Bridge. I waited in this quiet spot.

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We’ve posted previously on the Hotspur — a handbuilt, oversized, Titanium-tube frame with a carbon seatstay — and I raced it this weekend on a rolling course in Ravensdale Washington. The bike performed as expected with a solid ride that was very similar to the Modal, but weighing less, and riding like a straight-up racing bike. Bill Davidson and Mark’s design achieved a lighter, stiffer Ti bike with that distinctive “springy-road” feel that Ti aficionados love. The bike climbed, accelerated, and descended, like I’d expect and excelled at rolling.

Most remarkable about racing the Hotspur was it reminded me of my old 853 frame — a ride that set a benchmark for my future reviews. I could subtly feel the road and the frame reacting to it. By all accounts (including our own) the new Madones, Tarmacs, et al, are all excellent racing bikes, and the intent of the Hotspur was to demonstrate that Ti can compete with carbon.

I wasn’t having that much stem stub and requested an urgent removal. Later, an informal study at the race on Sunday found many varying degrees of stem stubs. How much stem stub do you tolerate? Mark noted that there were anti-anxiety medications for worrying about stem stubs.

Also, green bar tape, while the subject of ridicule from your racing bros, does work well on St. Pat’s day.

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For the Hotspur frame, Bill Davidson decided that to use the Feather Tech oversize titanium tubing. The key feature is the custom milling that Feather Tech employs to create external butting on very large diameter (for titanium) tubing.

Though Davidson Bicycles’ new Hotspur frame precipitated from Bill Davidson’s ideas on what a high performance bicycle should be, Bike Hugger provided the impetus to bring the idea to reality. Bike Hugger had previously worked with Bill on the Modal concept bike, based on some of my ideas about travel bikes. Setting aside the Modal’s unique features, Bill used Byron’s off-the-shelf race bike as starting point for the Modal’s geometry and then tweaked the geometry to improve the fit. Then a funny thing happened when Byron actually got to ride the bike. The Modal turned out to fit and perform better than Byron’s regular race bike.

Which begged the question: what would happen if Bill built Byron a bike designed for performance? This gave Bill the perfect opportunity to pull out some tricks that he’d been waiting to use … some subtle refinements on the titanium materials.

Today in Portland, Davidson Handbuilt Bicycles debuts the Hotspur frameset. In an age of single-season-use carbon frames built built for some Pro Tour rider and amongst the surge in intricately crafted, lugged steel, Bill Davidson makes his own statement: a bike is a rider’s tool that should acknowledge age-old lessons while not ignoring new technology.

That’s one of the Hotspur tubes before it was fabricated last week. It’s being built up this weekend, with a hotspurian theme, and readied for the Handmade Bicycle Show on 2/8.

More details are coming and, as an aside, before naming the bike, I consulted the Naming the Bicycle section of the Bike Cult Book. I didn’t crowdsource the name though, as Merlin Mann jokes about in this 5ives post.

Tracking for its debut at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, February 8th in Portland, the Hotspur frame is welded.

The Hotspur is another Bike Hugger project bike.

Details posted on 2/08/08.

From the Bike Hugger Photostream.

Quick, camera phone photos of the Bike Hugger Racing Bike project in progress … tacked up and ready to weld.

The concept frame and bike will debut at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, February 8th in Portland. Details about its interesting and innovative design and fabrication to follow.

Updated

More photos added with full details on 2/08/08.